Harry's Place

Here’s the latest announcement from the Pakistani comrades of the ‘Afghan Resistance’:

“You have until January 15 to stop sending your girls to schools. If you do not pay any heed to this warning, we will kill such girls. We also warn schools not to enrol any female students; otherwise, their buildings will be blown up.”

David T adds:

From the Washington Post

Few things symbolize progress in the fight against poverty better than the face of an educated girl. And I was fortunate enough to see hundreds of them during a trip to Afghanistan in 2006. Those faces, eager and alert, lit up the courtyard of a new school built to educate 1,000 girls in central Afghanistan’s Bamian province.

Gone were the days of Taliban rule, when girls were forbidden to study and women weren’t allowed to teach. Afghanistan’s future leaders could learn – out in the open.

Perhaps that is why last month’s brutal attack on a group of Afghan schoolgirls in the southern city of Kandahar was so heartbreaking. The students were walking to school in uniforms. Two men wielding water pistols drove by on motorcycles and sprayed battery acid.

They took aim at that same symbol of progress, the one that has inspired me and so many others.

At least three of the girls were hospitalized for severe burns on their faces, according to media reports. Afghan authorities later reported that they had arrested 10 Taliban militants in connection with the attack.

One of the girls spoke courageously from her hospital bed, with yellow ointment covering an eye damaged by the acid. “I will go to my school even if they kill me,” she told reporters. “My message for the enemies is that if they do this 100 times, I am still going to continue my studies.

The world must stand behind her.

(Via Normblog)